Eliminate Pro Review

Gameplay:

The greatest thing about this awesome game is that it’s totally free to download and play! the next greatest thing is the gameplay. The gameplay for Eliminate plays exactly how you would hope an FPS on your iPhone or iPod Touch would play. It handles so surprisingly well with the on screen dual sticks, however getting used to tapping and double tapping while evading spraying gun fire is something that takes a little getting used to. I still haven’t quite found a feasible use to use the jump feature just yet but maybe it just is not that useful in the game to begin with. I’ve played a few online multiplayer death matches and I am already hooked and addicted.

The action gets pretty fast paced and when you get a full room of people running and gunning the frags start to come at you from all angles. I could not be more happy with the way this game turned out and the in game upgrade purchasing is a nice touch, but I will talk more on that a bit later. The few maps that I played are pretty decent, they vary in size and some have multiple levels and hidden corridors.

The graphics are some of the best I have seen thus far on the platform and especially for its depth and size. Even running on my iPhone 3G it runs super smooth and so far I have not experienced any lag surprisingly while playing online via the 3G network. To go along with the great graphics the sound is also pristine. Nothing can ruin a great looking game more quickly than crappy sound. In Eliminate the weapons and music sound great and complement the game very well.

The user interface is very easy to navigate whether your trying to just start up a quick death match or upgrade your character the menus are easy to navigate and use.

There is a bunch of confused people out there that I have noticed from reading forums and comments about how this game works, and how upgrades and progression is achieved. So infused in my review I will try to clear up some of that confusion, as well as leave a few tips I feel are useful.

Credits and Power

First off, credits make the world go round in the world of Eliminate. In order to buy weapons and equipment upgrades, you need to spend credits and your overall earnings act as your experience point total. As you earn more credits, you increase in level, unlocking more powerful weapons and armor to buy along with available upgrades for your existing equipment.

In order to earn credits, you must be energized. The first time you load the game you will start out with a full energy bar, and while you have energy every opponent who dies in a match will drop credits which can be picked up by anyone nearby, not just by the person who killed him/her. After each match, your energy decreases until you’re eventually out, at which point you have three options: Wait for a recharge in 240 minutes (you don’t have to wait in game), buy energy via an in-game microtransaction, or continue playing for as long as you want without earning credits.

An extremely common misconception is that you can no longer play when you’re out of energy. The fact of the matter is you continue playing Eliminate for as long as you want, your character’s progress will just be stopped until the next recharge and it will take a few seconds longer for you to get matched in to a game. That’s it. If you’re happy just playing a few matches each day while earning credits and the rest of the time just playing for fun, you never need to spend a cent on Eliminate. However at some point you will tire of the free yet slow progression and be tempted into spending a little money to boost along your character.

The matchmaking system matches you up with people of somewhat similar skill and level. Because of this, not having the best equipment shouldn’t detract from your overall performance as much as you’d think. Yes true a rocket launcher against the default rifle is a bit of a miss match however if you can move and shoot well at the same time it makes very little difference. Skill can overcome upgrades and gear any day, I am still using my defaulted equipment and still wrecking fools who spent a bit of money on there characters.

Customizing to your Playing Style

After getting a few rounds in and getting a feel for the game play and mechanics, I would advise you to tweak your settings a bit. So when your ready, make your way to the options menu. Changing the look sensitivity is absolutely vital to increasing your accuracy and look speed. I’ve been preferring a higher sensitivity, but you should try out a few different settings while fighting against bots locally to find a setting that fits your gameplay style best.

If you prefer the controls flipped or inverted, there’s a checkbox for that along with a checkbox for showing or hiding the on-screen directional pads in game. These obviously are personal preference settings and seem to have no effect on gameplay performance. The final option to me seems a little like cheapening the game when activated and that is auto-fire feature.

With auto-fire turned on, you will automatically shoot whenever an enemy is inside of your crosshairs. If you’re having trouble getting comfortable with the controls, this can make the game much more accessible early on. While this may be friendly for beginners, you should try to get used to firing on your own with this turned off as soon as possible. To fire manually, you tap your right thumb once to begin firing, then briefly lift your thumb off the screen again to stop.

Auto-fire can unintentionally reveal your location and waste bullets. This is especially important once you’ve ranked up enough to be able to buy the rocket launcher, as every single shot you make with a rocket launcher needs to count since it takes so long to reload that you can’t just have the game automatically firing rockets whenever an enemy crosses your path or you’ll be a sitting duck.

Know your upgrade options early on

While browsing the store, you can easily see all the available weapons and armor you can eventually upgrade to granted you have the credit flow, but what isn’t obvious is that you can also upgrade the individual features of your existing defaulted equipment. Tap “Gear Up” then “Inventory” to see what you own, and available upgrades. Spending credits upgrading your existing weapons and armor can be more effective than upgrading to new weapons and armor, and more cost effective too. When starting out, it seems to be the most effective to save your credits to just upgrade one or two guns before other weapons.

Even though the auto-rifle is your default weapon, it can pack quite a punch once you sink some credits in to it to upgrade it. Similarly, even though armor skins may be attractive to buy to make your guy look cool, they’re a waste of credits early on when you could be increasing your overall combat effectiveness to earn more credits. Don’t underestimate the power of upgrading the stats of your defaulted weapons and armor, at least early on in the game.

Power Ups

There are quite a few power ups within the game and knowing what they all do can be very useful – so here is a list of the powers you can attain while running and gunning:

• Damage Amplifier – Similar to Quad Damage in Quake games, this substantially increases the amount of damage your weapons do. While your damage is amplified, it’s best to switch to weapons that have a wider attack like your rocket launcher or plasma cannon, as even enemies in the outside of their blast radius will be heavily damaged. While playing, if you see someone’s weapon glowing blue, it is probably best to run away from them until their power up wears off as they will be able to kill you much easier than you can kill them.
• Berserker Shield – With this active, you become invulnerable for a brief period of time. You can also shield-slam people with the berserker shield, which instantly kills anyone. The most effective thing to do while having this power up is to obviously shoot whoever you can while you’re getting close enough for shield slam to fire inside of melee range. Like the damage amplifier, the berserker shield will make the whole body of whoever has it glow blue. If you see someone with this graphical effect on their character, it’s probably best to run.
• Cloaking Field – My least favorite power up, when you pick this up your character turns mostly translucent. Unfortunately, firing gives away your location and your score doesn’t benefit from hiding so it is rarely very useful– Especially when playing against skilled opponents. Keep your eyes peeled and opponents who are cloaked won’t be much of an issue.
• Health Recharge – This seems to be the best power-up to have, when you pick it up your health will slowly recharge to 175 for its duration. Whenever an enemy is killed, be sure to grab the health recharge before the credits because you can’t pick up credits if you’re dead. If you see someone with a slightly red glow to them, they have this power-up active and will require a constant stream of bullets to kill.
• Jet Pack – Take to the skies with this power-up, jumping or looking up and moving forward will send you flying around the map. Useful for credits that get stuck in weird places or chasing opponents across large gaps.  It can be a little disorienting when you first pick it up, so if you see someone flying around try to pick them off before they get a handle on their trajectory.
• Acceleration – This power-up greatly increases your movement speed. Useful for stealing the credits from other peoples’ kills and running away from enemies with strong power ups active. Opponents with this activated are obvious as they will be moving very quickly. On the up side, at least you know they’re not regenerating health so they should be easy to kill.

Keep in mind, only one power-up can be active at a time so no stacking power ups. Picking up another power up while currently equipped with one cancels out the previous effect and grants you the new effect. The duration of power-ups can be increased by upgrading the power-up functionality of your armor, which is at the bottom of the list in the inventory page that has armor upgrades. Generally speaking the best power-up seems to be the health recharge followed closely by the berserker shield and damage amplifier depending on the situation. However your playing style may of course differ from my own and you may find a different strategy using different buffs for your character.

Maximizing your Damage and Credits

Eliminate uses basic hit box detection, so aiming for the head does more damage than the body naturaly. Whenever possible try to aim at the heads of your opponents for maximum damage. If you’re in a hallway with an opponent and you’re shooting their head while they’re shooting your body, you will win and be able to recharge back to full health when you pick up their health power-up that drops when they are fragged.

Taunting awards additional credits while energized, so make sure you shake your iPhone when you’re on top of any corpse. When you hear your character say “Yeah!”, you’ve successfully taunted. Also, speaking of credits, once an enemy has died anyone who is energized can pick up the credits they drop. If you’re trying to maximize your income, be as crafty as possible and let other people do much of the killing only to sweep in, kill them, and clean up all the credits with half the work.

Recap

So the game is absolutely free to download and play, however after your first game your energy will decrease and you will not get a free recharge until 240 minutes goes by (don’t have to wait in game) You can continually play without the charge just for fun however your in game progression and ranking will be very slow.

Changing up your setting can make a difference in your gameplay. Play with bot characters locally to get a feel for the game then play a few more matches with different sensitivity settings to see which works best for your game play style, this can make you much more accurate and responsive when looking and turning in the game.

After your skills increase try turning off the auto-fire feature in the options menu to keep the game challenging and legit.

Verdict

- This is definitely a must have game and best of all it is totally free. The gameplay is super smooth and fun and becomes very addicting and challenging and is one of the best game apps I have on my iPhone. Maybe even the best game available in the app store. If you love first person shooter games than it’s a no brain-er to own this app – I recommend trying this app out before you pay for other FPS games like Doom and the like since this one is free, and not to mention its a true multi-player shooter.

Gameplay: 5/5
Controls: 4/5
Graphics: 4.5/5
Sound: 4/5
Overall: 4.8/5

Check out the detailed weapons info for Eliminate here

Gameplay Video

-Steve